


At Least the Breasts Were Nice

by Toshi_Nama



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Breasts, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Silly, Size Difference, Travel, there was only one tent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:00:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27370840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toshi_Nama/pseuds/Toshi_Nama
Summary: When the world is ending, there are worse places to wind up than in a bosom. Just saying.
Relationships: Cabot/Flissa
Comments: 8
Kudos: 5
Collections: 2020 A Paragon of Their Kind Dragon Age Dwarf Exchange





	At Least the Breasts Were Nice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blarfkey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blarfkey/gifts).



Whatever he’d expected from some divine messenger sealing up the sky, an attack by a sodding army of glowing Templars wasn’t it. The fact it was topped off by a Blighted dragon and a desperate retreat following a dying priest - or whatever he was - only made the fact his face was now buried in breasts seem somehow fitting.

“Yes, I’ll convert now,” he mumbled into the soft flesh. Though he could do without the lace or whatever catching under his beard, he’d been branded long enough to know beggars couldn’t be choosers. Besides, they were _great_ breasts.

The voice was familiar. “Excuse me! Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean…”

The breasts vanished. Cabot almost begged for them back, especially when they were replaced by a slap of icy wind that was somehow even more insulting than it would have been under other circumstances. He opened his eyes to glare at the wind, and the owner of said breasts, in the direct line of fire, flushed.

“I really am sorry, I slipped on a patch of ice and my ankle…”

“It’s fine. I wasn’t glaring at you. This storm…” he gestured vaguely, then remembered where he’d seen her. “You’re the owner of the Singing Maiden.”

If she was a maiden, that was a damn shame. On the other hand, he’d never heard her sing...and then his brain, still aching at the sudden loss of breasts, started going down a very _different_ trail of thought about ‘singing.’ He yanked it away from her chest and up to her face. _Oh, sod it all._

“I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s...alright.” Flissa, that was her name, managed a bit of a smile. “I’d put my heart and soul into that place for the last nine years, and...and it all came crashing down. It was named for _her,_ you know? Nightingale. She wasn’t a Sister then, but was there with the Hero of Ferelden, and helped him stop the cult. I heard her song, and had to come.”

There was absolutely nowhere safe for him to pat, and he wasn’t really someone who did sympathy well, but he grunted and nodded. A bar of his own...he’d never thought to have a dream like that. He was just a brand, good for hard labor and that was about it.

 _“Move out!”_ The call rang across the iced-over excuse of a ‘camp,’ and everyone around them muttered, finished up whatever they’d found to eat or drink, and wrapped blankets and cloaks even tighter around shivering bodies.

Cloaks.

Blankets.

“You don’t have a cloak.”

Flissa shook her head. “I’m from the mountains - I’m fine. Let’s go.”

He threw one more log on the fire, too wet to save. You never knew, there might be stragglers.

**

Flissa hadn’t been exaggerating about her ankle. He’d expected her to outpace him, and it was obvious that she would have otherwise - but in ten minutes he had his arm around her...waist. She leaned against him heavily with each step, trying to keep her weight off of what must have been badly sprained or even broken.

“There’s no time,” she said breathlessly. “Besides, the healers have more important things to do.”

Right or wrong, Cabot’d been in Ferelden long enough to know there was no point in arguing once a woman had made up her mind. Plus, there was something...admirable about Flissa. The woman who he’d wound up partnering with was far more than the amazing breasts he’d discovered first - though he wasn’t complaining about the one pressed against the top of his head. She’d apologized, and he’d shrugged it off. _‘Keeps that ear warm, you’re fine,’_ he’d shot back, and for the first time he’d heard her laugh.

She had a lovely laugh that dissolved at the end into something almost like a giggle. _‘Ear warmer? That’s a new one.’_

“C’mon,” he grunted, “I see a fire ahead.”

Her voice was shallow now, coming out in short bursts. “Twenty paces?”

His arm tightened. “Thirty or nothing.” Before she could apologize or get too depressed, he tossed in another comment. “I’ve got short legs, partner.”

It wasn’t quite a laugh, but it was something. They’d make it, and _his_ first stop was going to be to a healer or the wagons someone had managed to save. Even if they didn’t have time to do much, Flissa needed a splint. That, he could manage himself.

**

He’d managed the splint, and she’d managed to scrounge up a badly-burnt half-cloak from somewhere he wasn’t going to ask about. Especially as ‘half’ wasn’t the traditional sense of cut to the waist, but half as in, ‘the bottom and half the hood were gone.’ They traded their finds over cups of some vile brew that was blessedly warm.

“So you knew Nightingale?”

Flissa smiled. “I met a singing Sister with a bow. She wasn’t Nightingale then, just a stubborn and idealistic bard wearing scuffed leather armor. A woman who believed in goodness and followed her dream. It...saved...Haven, and Ferelden besides.”

His partner took another drink then re-wrapped her frayed shawl around her shoulders. It had _been_ green once, probably. That was before time and the expected stains, spills, and dirt of years of working a bar had scared the color into the safety of memories. Flissa had steadily refused anything else, and Cabot had to admit that she didn’t seem to get goosebumps. Not that _he_ could see, and despite the shawl, there was plenty of...opportunity for inspection.

“Was she always so stabby?”

“No! Well, not so cold about it. She had her bow and the string sang its own tune back then - a darker one than the Chant from her lips. And she tried to heal people afterward. The years have been hard on her. She doesn’t sing any longer,” Flissa mused.

There was a history there - a deep one, if Cabot guessed right. He rubbed his cheek, feeling his own story in the brand that scarred it, the puckered flesh long-since healed without nerves to feel the pain. Then he took another drink of the boiled tea and lichen - he recognized the taste.

“Add this in,” Flissa passed over a packet of something. “Just a pinch.”

“Never doubt a bartender,” he quipped, and followed her instructions. Whatever it was, it turned his drink from musty to almost perky. Even the ice pellets masquerading as snow didn’t sting so badly.

She shrugged and finished off her mug. “It’s a mountain needle. Too much is bad for you, but a little bit can freshen anything up.”

Cabot nodded and downed his before the expected call came again. _“Move out!”_ He heaved himself to his feet and tied his mug onto his belt, then helped haul Flissa to her feet.

Huh. The burnt-off part of the cloak was right where she leaned against him. Convenient that. “You must have gotten the cloak for a song.”

She giggled. “Something like that.”

**

Flissa looked up before he did. “We’ll stop soon,” she said.

“Huh?” Brilliant that, but ‘brilliant repartee’ had never been his strong suit, even before the demon-shitting sky, sealing said sky up, attack by glow-in-the-dark Tempars, a dragon, and then marching seven hours in a sodding blizzard. At this point, his focus was on their four feet and what he could almost make out of the ground, the niggling worry that said feet not hurting was _bad,_ the weight of the woman against him, and his ears. One was colder than the heart of a Noble Caste dwarf, and the other was covered in something soft and warm. Thank the uncaring Ancestors for that, because if all he had was the cloak, he’d have frozen solid by now.

“There’s a space ahead. The pass. You’ll see. Shelter from the wind, even.” Her voice had gotten choppy again, along with her stride. It hopped, forcing out just the essentials.

“I don’t suppose there’s a hidden fortress up here?”

The wind howled too much for him to hear her laugh, but he believed in it all the same. “Tents, if we have them.”

Well, tents were better than dying, and those looked like their two options. He kept watching his feet.

“I’ll take tents.”

**

It turned out, they’d take _one_ tent, and be glad of it. It was being shared with another two, but they were a healer and one of the Commander’s soldiers who’d arrived here with the first wave and gotten an hour’s rest before being told to guard the way and help stragglers.

“My ear’s gonna fall off.”

“I’ve got a remedy for that,” Flissa quipped as she beat the snow out of her shawl and left it to hang with his cloak at the entrance. The tent was so small that the woman didn’t need to stand. Even _he_ had to bend over a little to keep from hitting the snow-weighted canvas.

Cabot fought with the laces of his boots. “Bet you do. Some kind of root thing this time, or the pelt of some giant snow spider? It’s fine, I’m just blowing off steam.”

One of her boots sailed past him. “Ass.”

“Hey, at least I’m a rugged, _sturdy_ ass.”

When he looked over, she’d not managed to get the boot around her bad ankle off, but somehow her bodice was lower. A _lot_ lower. That or it was his imagination and actually looking her straight on. His mind darted back to his first introduction with her and tried to map out the skin he saw versus the bosom he’d managed to bury his face in way back a mountain ago, but gave up quickly.

“Need some help with that? I can get it off, but it might hurt.”

“The laces aren’t _that_ tight, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Cabot swallowed his tongue as a deep breath made it clear exactly _which_ laces Flissa was talking about. “Look, I don’t need any…”

She shook her head and laughed. Even in his embarrassment, he felt his lips lift to join in. 

“Why do you think I stumbled into you in the first place? No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t catch your attention back in Haven. The ankle, I admit, wasn’t supposed to be part of it. That happened when the Herald rescued me.”

His tongue started moving first. “Here I thought you were insanely dedicated.”

He reached for her foot.

“What are you doing?”

Now it was finally his turn to chuckle. He shifted from sitting to kneeling, unlacing her boot. Cabot set the stiff leather worm aside. “On three.”

He pulled as he said the number, and she gasped.

“At least the cold helps.” 

Cabot grunted back. It didn’t look great, but it didn’t look like it met the ‘get a healer’ threshold, not these days. He wrapped it carefully, tightly, then let his hands caress the calf above.

“What are you doing?”

“You asked that already,” he pointed out.

Flissa snorted, and it was all he could do to not peek and see if her bodice had finally given up after all the heaving. There was time. “You didn’t answer, you know.”

There was that. Her ankle was important, but it wasn’t what either of them wanted to think about right now. She purred, a little breathy thing, when his fingers slid up a little farther. There was only skin, not leggings under her skirt.

“When you’re a dwarf, you learn to start at the bottom and work your way up.”


End file.
